Last year, legendary investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO published a treatise on exploding commodity prices.

He also offered a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of humanity.

Grantham believes the world has undergone a permanent "paradigm shift" in which the number of people on Earth has finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us.

The phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural resources cannot continue forever, Grantham says--and the prices of metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect that.

Grantham believes that the planet can only sustainably support about 1.5 billion humans, versus the 7 billion on Earth right now (heading to 10-12 billion). For all of history except the last 200 years, the human population has been controlled via the limits of the food supply. Grantham thinks that, eventually, the same force will come into play again.

The hope of the optimists, of course, is that science will find a solution to this problem, the way it has for the past 150 years.

Let's hope so.

In the meantime, here's a snapshot of Grantham's argument, along with his key points at the end.

The phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural resources cannot continue forever, Grantham says--and the prices of metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect that.

No, commodity prices are beginning to reflect the infinite supply of banknotes (they just keep printing more....). It's called inflation.

4
posted on 11/26/2012 8:56:56 PM PST
by Smokin' Joe
(How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing)

And also assuming we know with rigorous, reproducible scientific experiment how oil is formed within the earth. What do we know about that process, really? Like Global Warming, we have unproven theories accepted as fact, with significant peer reviews (i.e. circle-fest) supporting this presumed conclusion.

And how about Haiti? And we are mowing down the worlds forests at an ever increasing rate,,,even though they create the oxygen we need. But what the hell, once the forests are gone along with oxygen, we will find other “solutions,” right? We are a fundamentally insane species.

What do we know about that process, really? Like Global Warming, we have unproven theories accepted as fact, with significant peer reviews (i.e. circle-fest) supporting this presumed conclusion.

Unlike Global Warming, however, we've been using these models for over a century to explore for oil, and they work.

The Global Warmists are hard pressed to get next week's weather right, much less any long term climate predictions. Recall how we'd all be burning up by now? (The planet hasn't warmed for over a decade.)

21
posted on 11/26/2012 9:14:28 PM PST
by Smokin' Joe
(How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing)

I hear some folks may actually have successfully designed a warp drive design, and after the Great Civil War some rocket geeks will snag an old rocket and take it for a spin proving it to be a working design.

Next thing we know some interstellar species will drop in with ideas of expanding their tourism trade to other planets.

Since so far we have been nothing more than copycatting ultra evolved primates who still cannot have proper elections these other planetary folks have been just laughing their asses off watching us.

the sooner we get our shit together and eradicate, yes I mean eradicate these social assbackwardism everyone seems so fond then we can get off this over capacity rock and head elsewhere.

29
posted on 11/26/2012 9:25:44 PM PST
by Eye of Unk
(A Civil Cold War in America is here, its already been declared.)

Asteroids might be a fascinating place to get precious metals from, but I don’t believe that space will need mining for the “bread and butter stuff” before the Story ends due to factors that we can’t control.

30
posted on 11/26/2012 9:27:40 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

One wonders what the land of China would have looked like if colonized by people who had the mindset of the pilgrims to America. Instead of a thin overcrowded band on its coast, the place would be crisscrossed with highways and railroads from east to west.

37
posted on 11/26/2012 9:33:39 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

More sensible to mine Venus for resources (with high temperature robots, to be sure — resurgence of thermionic tube technology anybody?) than to try to move there. Unless maybe the sun decides to shrink.

42
posted on 11/26/2012 9:38:38 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

And after all, if the oracle says people will be partying right up to the finish, that doesn’t suggest something intolerably horrible is going to beset before that point. I like a lot of the astrological/cosmological ideas of Hugh Ross, http://www.reasons.org even if some of his projections seem a little too tidily tied up with ribbons. (I will cheerfully confess to being an old-earth creationist, though.) Modern science, when not driven by selective agendas that give us stuff like modern global-warmism, keeps succeeding in revealing more and more what a wonder it is that we inhabit.

47
posted on 11/26/2012 9:49:17 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

The disaster is not lack of natural resources, it is lack of human capital. The US has gone from a nation with a strong work ethic, biblical morality and honest, frugal government to a nation of shiftless libertines voting themselves a life of ease and comfort out of the public treasury. We are the last domino to fall, the one support for the rest of the world. We are a market for the Asians, security for Europeans, and charity for the Africans.

It is not 7 billion people, most of whom live in abject poverty anyway, it is the few tens of millions in developed nations that are killing their economies with a mountain of debt and socialist governments.

We have peaked. Our leaders lack the will to do anything but buy votes out of the public treasury. We start wars, but for all of our might we can't seem to convincingly win them. The barbarians will only attack more frequently now, and our response will be ever more lethargic.

The disaster will be of our own making. Whatever external event will just be the background.

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